


The Devil In Winter

by musicforswimming



Category: Sharpe - Cornwell
Genre: Cold Weather, Gen, Historical, Pre-Series, Snow and Ice, Weapons, Weather, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-11-25
Updated: 2005-11-25
Packaged: 2017-10-02 10:56:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicforswimming/pseuds/musicforswimming
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Winter, 1808: Teresa tracks a fleeing English company across the countryside.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Devil In Winter

Teresa has not known many winters like this. Everything is hard as iron, and things either stay, solid and everlasting and not the least inclined to yield, or they shatter like fine glass smashed underfoot. Winters have been cold, but she does not remember any like this -- none that she was out in, at the very least. This is not cold; this is something beyond it, below it. It is a knife when you breathe, and that is far more than simple cold.

And still, the French are coming.

"They are demons," is the muttered joke amongst the guerillas, and sometimes you cannot tell whether it is a joke or not. Not that it matters so very much -- in cold such as this, in dead land like Spain is this winter, the evil of men is not so very distinguishable from the evil of Heaven's outcast.

Hell takes both, she tells herself, when she wonders sometimes, over one French body or another. When they camp, it is within hearing of church bells, which will ward off demons, and when there are no churches nearby, they try to find running water, because vampires cannot cross it, so perhaps the French will have trouble too.

But they keep coming. The French keep coming, and the English have turned tail and run. There are wolves in the cities and wolves in the countries, demons in the evil places and demons in the Imperial column, and after so many days, she does not care so much anymore that some of the wolves walk on two legs and some of the demons have red blood, because after a few days dead, their bodies will be hard as iron, and there are not many whom the Devil will turn away.

She must mind her sword in this weather, as they follow a last ragtag English company, mind that it does not stick. She is gratified, at least, that the men in their green jackets are as miserable as the French are. "Maybe," she says at the fire one night, "the French will decide that it's not worth fighting for, either, just as the English have."

There is soft, angry laughter, as hard as the iron ground and just as warm.

Teresa minds her sword, and minds that her powder stays dry in this weather. She lets the cold knife her when she must shoot, unwrapping the scarf from around her face, and it feels like atonement. _Thou shalt not kill,_ after all, but here she is.

The sound of churchbells travels far in the cold clear nights. When it snows, the bell-sound is soft, muffled, as the snow drifts down and shrouds everything, dead and walking dead alike. It is achingly sad those nights, and she is, with the sound of it, dimly aware of the network of cracks and fractures within herself.

Everything is brittle in the cold, she reminds herself on sensing the many fissures there. Everything shatters and cracks, or it does not yield at all. Well, Teresa would rather that it were the latter for her soul, but it does not matter so much, and she does not see that she has much of a choice. She was dealt the soul that she has, and if it cracks, then she can only repair it.

The French fear them. Teresa wonders sometimes if, when they camp near towns, it is so that they might hear the churchbells as well.

If she cannot tell her own blood from those of the wolves, if the rosary of one French soldier looks rather like her own -- well. There is something that is fitting about that, really. It will all be the same in the end, after all, for the Devil turns none away.

Teresa minds her sword, that it does not stick, and she does not think too long on it when she must kill. She prays when she can, for herself, and she prays still for her mother and sister.

Confession, for now, and prayer, help to keep the cracks from spreading too much. When spring comes -- if it comes, but that is silly, for of course it will -- perhaps things will melt again.


End file.
